


Cornwall Calling

by LulaIsAKitten



Series: Denmark Street musings [41]
Category: Cormoran Strike Series - Robert Galbraith
Genre: Belonging, But it’s still a general rating, F/M, Strike feels the pull of home, Tagged imperfectly so as not to give anything away
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-22
Updated: 2020-12-22
Packaged: 2021-03-11 05:33:42
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,656
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28240026
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LulaIsAKitten/pseuds/LulaIsAKitten
Summary: This idea was vaguely in the back of my head since Troubled Blood, and then chapter 28 of cbstrike’s Strikesgiving gave it traction and it wouldn’t let go, so here it is. It needed to get out of my head. Written in one rush and I don’t have time to edit so apologies for typos/repeats.
Series: Denmark Street musings [41]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1035698
Comments: 27
Kudos: 45





	Cornwall Calling

**Author's Note:**

> This idea was vaguely in the back of my head since Troubled Blood, and then chapter 28 of cbstrike’s Strikesgiving gave it traction and it wouldn’t let go, so here it is. It needed to get out of my head. Written in one rush and I don’t have time to edit so apologies for typos/repeats.

Strike came to consciousness slowly. The weight of the feather duvet over him, the distant sound of waves crashing against the harbour wall, the constant, mournful cry of seagulls, the tang of salt in the air that wafted in through the slightly open bedroom window. He knew that if he opened his eyes, the warm sunshine he could feel on his face would dazzle the room with a fresh sparkle that London never quite achieved. Sometimes he had to admit, in cosy moments like this, that he was more at home here in Cornwall than he would ever be in London.

And those moments happened more and more these days, thanks to the woman sleeping next to him. Without opening his eyes, he shifted in the bed, sliding an arm around her, and she muttered a little in her sleep, snuggling down into the pillows. They’d enjoyed a long, leisurely evening at the Victory last night with Dave and Penny Polworth and then come back here to retire to bed, where he’d kept her awake for another two hours until she’d laughed and told him he had far too much stamina and she needed her sleep. He’d drifted off with a feeling of deep contentment while she snored softly in his arms.

Strike thought about getting up and making tea. It would mean reattaching his leg, but would also mean he could sneak out to the little neatly-kept garden outside the back door with its rockery and borders of fuschias for a cigarette.

In a minute. He pulled her a little closer, feeling long-familiar curves against him, and not for the first time wondered if it was time to make a decision about his life. Wondered if his future truly lay in London, as he’d always believed it did, or if in fact he would be more settled back here in St Mawes. Wondered if it was time.

He sighed a little, and his thoughts drifted guiltily to Robin as Kerenza shifted in his arms, disturbed by his movement. He was aware that his partner was taking on more of the agency work, but that was just how things had worked out in recent months. The nightmarish trek through appalling floods to St Mawes when his aunt Joan lay dying had set up an irritation in his long-neglected stump that had slowly begun to be more of an issue; eventually he had been forced, at Robin’s insistence, to go back to his specialist who had tutted and grumbled and insisted he rest the stump, spend more time without his prosthesis to let the skin heal properly. Their only current cases had involved huge amounts of walking; Robin had been adamant that she and Barclay and Greenstreet, who was proving eminently capable, take these. Hutchins, struggling with his MS a little, was doing some paperwork from home to keep his income topped up, and between him and Pat the admin was taken care of. For the first time in many long, arduous years, the workaholic Strike had little to do.

He’d run things from his desk for a while, and it had suited him to take a back seat over the winter. He’d spent many weekends in Cornwall. His uncle Ted, who had seemed to cope remarkably well over the summer immediately following Joan’s death, had sunk into a depression in the autumn that Lucy hadn’t been able to cheerfully bully him out of - Strike felt slightly guilty for seeing it as bullying, but it also irked him that Lucy couldn’t see that she really wasn’t helping. He’d spent more and more time down here, and he knew Dave was calling in to see Ted and so was Kerenza, the Macmillan nurse who had cared for Joan so compassionately and humanely in her final weeks and months. On a night out at the Victory with Dave, Kerenza had been there with friends and had come across to say hello and ended up staying for the evening. Somehow Strike hadn’t gone back to the Nancarrow house that night, necessitating an embarrassing mumbled call to his uncle not to worry about him - he was forty now, for God’s sake, but Ted worried - and had spent the night in Kerenza’s white-painted cottage instead, kissing freckles, learning her body, tangling his fingers in her hair that was as much grey as blonde, and had that sea-salt-burned, slightly rough texture that reminded him of the girls he’d snogged at school. There was something about her that tasted like home, felt like home.

Slowly he’d spent more and more time here over the winter, travelling up and down on the train, escaping the feelings of boredom and uselessness in London, taking Ted shopping or just sitting with him and playing cards or chess, and after dinner making his way to Kerenza’s. It suited everyone, and the agency was running discomfortingly smoothly without him.

Strike sighed and finally opened his eyes, seriously contemplating getting up now. He needed to pee, and his cigarettes were calling him. He lay, warm and mostly comfortable, ignoring his bladder and trying to delay the moment a little longer, watching the white chiffon curtains sway in the cool spring breeze.

Why did he still feel guilty about Robin? It was a vague feeling of unease that he couldn’t put his finger on. They were still friends, got on well, although Friday nights at the Tottenham had largely stopped now, because most weeks either Robin was working or Strike was on a train to Cornwall. He knew she was seeing a lot of Michelle, their new hire, and the two were getting on well. He wondered if she was dating anyone. He wondered if she’d tell him if she was. It had caused a surprisingly awkward moment when he’d dropped into conversation - they were friends now, after all, and his other friends knew, thanks to Polworth gossiping - that he was seeing Kerenza. She’d hesitated just a moment too long before smiling and asking a couple of questions, in the broadest of strokes, about who Kerenza was and how they’d met, and then had changed the subject back to work. He assured himself he’d been imagining a slightly cooler air between them ever since. Robin was just busy with work, and there was nothing he could do about that until his leg was better.

But he knew, in the dark of the night alone in his flat, why this coolness existed between them now, knew it was because of Kerenza. Knew that if it was Robin who had begun dating, he would feel exactly as he assumed she did now, slightly betrayed, somewhat hurt, and for no good reason. Nothing had ever happened between them, and this was surely more proof that it never should. Their working partnership, the best relationship he’d had with a member of the opposite sex in his life apart from perhaps Ilsa - and she annoyed him a lot of the time - relied upon them being friends, and no more than friends. Anything more risked jeopardising everything.

And yet there had been moments last year, moments around their birthdays, as Robin turned thirty and he turned forty, when everything seemed to be subtly changing and he had thought that they were drifting that way, moments when he tried to convince himself that it wasn’t such a terrible idea after all. Then his leg had grown worse, and as always he had held everyone at arm’s length when they tried to help him, Robin included, and then she had taken over the running of the agency again, and he’d been in Cornwall half the time, and now here he was.

Kerenza suited him. He was very fond of her. She was his age, sensible and capable. Long divorced after an unwise young marriage, with no children. She was St Mawes personified, he’d thought once in a moment of silly fancy. She’d lived in the town twenty years now after moving across from Falmouth as a district nurse before joining the Macmillan team. She knew everyone in the small town, cared for their dying with boundless compassion. She drank in the local pub, helped with backstage and scenery at the local amateur theatre, knew how to sail, lived here in this impossibly sweet cottage with its beams Strike had to constantly guard against banging his head on, its white walls and its cheery red front door surrounded by pots and borders of fuschias which, she’d told him, had been her mum’s favourite flowers. She belonged here, rooted into Cornwall, and he could no more imagine her in London than he had once been able to imagine himself living back here.

He could get used to this, though, he mused now, stretching and slowly beginning to ease himself out from under the heavy duvet. The fresh air, the sea salt, the feeling of contentment that he was finally spending enough time with Ted, that he was close to Joan. He was enjoying spending time with Dave. He was starting to care deeply about the gentle, compassionate nurse who had been so kind to his aunt in her last days, who had eased her passage from this life as though it were the most natural thing in the world, which of course it was.

He reached for his leg, still slotted into his trousers which were in turn still holding his boxers, and pulled the lot on, easing his sore stump into the prosthesis and wishing that his leg would heal faster. He knew it couldn’t be helped, and he had to be patient, and that probably the walking around hilly St Mawes wasn’t helping.

He pulled on a clean T-shirt from his rucksack and, leaving Kerenza sleeping, he made his way first to the bathroom across the hall and then down to the kitchen, where he filled the kettle and set it to boil and then retrieved his cigarettes and let himself out into the garden and lit up gratefully. He reflected that Kerenza never mentioned his smoking, when she must in her line of work deal with the effects of lung cancer. The uncomfortable prickle, that had slid down his back on a dismayingly regular basis when he lit a cigarette since he had turned forty, nagged him again. He really was going to have to give up.

 _Why not, Strike?_ He asked himself now, eyeing the sliver of sea he could see between the houses in the row slightly below Kerenza’s twee cottage. Why not give up smoking, give up London, give up his unhealthy lifestyle of takeaways and too many pints and cigarettes, of smog and stress and long working hours? Life was so simple down here in Cornwall, so...homely. He could belong here in the same way that Kerenza belonged here, home, rooted. Wasn’t Polworth always telling him he was a Nancarrow by blood, a Cornishman born and bred?

Unbidden, Robin drifted into his thoughts again, and he pushed her away a little angrily. He could never have with Robin what he had with Kerenza. She had barely ever set foot in his home county. He couldn’t imagine her sailing a boat, laughing along with Polworth, discovering endless mutual acquaintances from either side of the bay across to Falmouth. No, Robin came from blasted moors and dry stone walls (Strike was aware, with a twist of amusement, that his vague mental image of Yorkshire was somewhat stereotypical) and he just couldn’t imagine her here.

Could he really imagine leaving London, though? Leaving the agency?

He sighed. How much longer, realistically, was he going to be able to keep doing the job? If he quit smoking and drinking, lost weight, maybe he had a few more years in him. But it was only ever going to get harder. He was ultimately going to have to let Robin take over the reins and consign himself to more of a back seat. He hadn’t imagined that moment arriving so soon, but why not now? Why not take a little happiness, companionship, if it was being offered to him?

He dropped his cigarette end onto the path and ground it out under his heel, then made his way back into the little kitchen, ducking in the low doorway. Familiar with Kerenza’s space, he swiftly made two mugs of tea - creosote for him, milky for her. He heard the flush of the toilet as he made his way to the stairs, and by the time he arrived in the bedroom she was sitting up in bed, smiling her soft smile at him, and a wash of fondness swelled over him.

“Thank you,” she said as he passed her her tea and then placed his on the bedside table on his side of the bed. He undid his trousers again and sat to remove them and his leg, climbed back into bed next to her in just his T-shirt and boxers.

“How’s the leg?”

Strike grimaced. “Still sore.”

She nodded, accepting. She never nagged or offered to help, merely asking after his health as if he just had a cold or something. He appreciated her discretion. “What are your plans for this fine Sunday?”

She was smiling, and he chuckled. “Three o’clock train,” he replied. “So I’ll go and have Sunday lunch with Ted. You joining?” He tangled his fingers idly with hers, and she smiled at him and set her mug down.

“I’ll let you guys have a chat today,” she replied. “I’ve got some bits and pieces to do here. He’s seemed better this week.”

Strike nodded, sipping his scalding tea, and then putting it back down too. “He is a little better, I think.”

Kerenza nodded. “I’ll call in on Tuesday like I always do,” she said, and something washed over Strike then, a feeling that was hard to define, that contained a fierce fondness and a hint of guilt, of old torn loyalties. He didn’t want to go back to London and leave his girlfriend and his mate looking after his uncle. His fingers tightened on hers, and she squeezed him back.

There was a long pause.

“You all right?” Kerenza asked softly, and, heart hammering, Strike turned to her, suddenly realising he was going to say it.

“I was thinking—” He broke off and looked down at their entwined hands.

“What about?” she asked eventually.

Strike took a slow breath. “What if I moved down here? Permanently?”

There was another silence that Strike wasn’t sure whether it was contemplative, horrified or simply...a pause while she waited for him to finish the thought. He risked a glance at her, and she was watching him carefully, her blue eyes kind and warm as always in her freckled, slightly wind-weathered face.

“Why?” she asked.

Strike blinked. “To be nearer Ted. To be nearer you. To— come home.”

She pressed her fingers to his again gently. “What about the agency?”

Strike shrugged. “They’re managing fine without me. I could take a small stipend from it, Robin could report to me here—” why did his business partner’s name feel like an intrusion into this moment? “—and do something local, I dunno. I can turn my hand to most things. I’ve still got my Army pension.”

Kerenza had her head on one side now. “You’re serious,” she said softly.

“I am,” he replied. He turned properly in the bed to face her. “I know we don’t talk about...feelings, but I really like you. I’m very fond of you. We have a good time together, we get on well, we—”

“Do you love me?” she interjected, startling him.

“I—” He hesitated too long, and Kerenza smiled gently.

“I thought not,” she told him. “You can’t leave your business and move the breadth of the country for someone you don’t love.”

Strike opened and closed his mouth, floundering a little. “I don’t _not_ love you,” he managed. “I don’t— I told myself I was done with all that after Charlotte. I don’t want love, it’s painful and messy and chaotic. I want what we have. Belonging.” He squeezed her hand again, willing her to understand.

Kerenza understood only too well, it seemed.

“What we have is rooted in Cornwall,” she told him gently. “It’s part of you reassessing things after your aunt died. It’s part of you wanting to reconnect with St Mawes.” She gently withdrew her hand from his, and picked up her tea again. “By all means, throw in the business and leave your flat and move down here if you want to be a Cornishman again. But you can’t do it for me.”

“Why not?” Strike demanded a touch indignantly.

She sighed. “Because it wouldn’t work out between us,” she told him. “You’d be happy enough for a few months, you’d spend time with Ted and start turning into Dave—” she grinned at his scowl “—and convince yourself that you were happy. For a while.”

She set her tea back down again and took his hands in hers. “But eventually you’d be restless and unsettled, and want to go back to London.”

Strike looked away. “You make me sound like my mother.” He’d not discussed Leda much with her, but he knew Ted had.

Kerenza leaned in, pressed a kiss to his cheek. “She never found what she was looking for. You have.”

He turned back to her, uncertain, and she gazed at him impassively. “You found Robin.”

Strike could feel his cheeks heating up. He did not, most certainly did _not_ , want to discuss his feelings for Robin here, in this room, in this bed, with this woman. He turned away again, said nothing.

Kerenza sighed and let his hands go.

“I know more than you think, Cormoran,” she told him softly. “I know Joan wanted the two of you together even though she’d never met Robin. I know Ted and Lucy think you’ll end up with her, and Dave.”

“Well, they can all keep their opinions to themselves,” Strike muttered crossly. “We work together, we’re friends. That’s all.”

Kerenza nodded. “Maybe so,” she replied. “I’m not suggesting there’s anything going on. I don’t think you’d string two of us along, that’s not who you are. But deep down...”

She trailed off, and there was an awkward pause.

“When she rings, you go outside to take the calls.”

Strike shifted uncomfortably. “It’s agency business. It’s sensitive.”

“When I came to London, you booked us a hotel.”

“My flat is tiny.”

“And above the office. And, no doubt, bigger than a hotel room.” Her voice was still gentle, but held the faintest note of teasing.

Strike snorted, an unwilling smile stealing across his face despite feeling called out. “Barely.”

Kerenza smiled too now, and pressed a kiss to his cheek again. She laid a hand to his face and turned him into her so she could kiss his mouth, slow and sweet.

She drew back. “I like what we have,” she told him. “You’re always welcome in my house, in my bed.” She grinned. “But I think we both know your future is in London, hey?”

Strike sighed and pressed his forehead to hers. “I like what we have too.”

“Then stop trying to change it. If you start talking about moving down here again, I shall be forced to dump you.”

This drew a reluctant laugh from him, lightening the mood further, but somehow melancholy still lingered. Strike wished he had kept his mouth shut. He felt as though he’d tried to force open a flower, and in doing so had broken the petals, had broken something that might have opened on its own, given time.

Or might not. He sighed again and nuzzled his face into her neck, and she slid her arms around his broad back. They sat for long moments, half entwined.

“Come on,” Kerenza said eventually, briskly and a little roughly. “You need to get to Ted’s.” She turned away from him, not meeting his gaze, and climbed out of the bed. Strike nodded and cleared his throat gruffly, turned to finish his tepid tea and pull his clothes back on.

In the space of a functional, slightly strained half an hour, he had gathered his things and was at her front door. He stepped out and turned back, looking down at her. She gazed back up at him, tears in her clear blue eyes.

“You won’t be back.” It wasn’t a question.

Strike cleared his throat again. “I guess not.” He hesitated.

“Kerenza, I’m sorry. I wish...” He trailed off.

She nodded, and then stepped forward and wrapped her arms around him. “I know,” she whispered. “Me, too.”

She squeezed him tight, and Strike swallowed hard, his throat aching, and hugged her back fiercely.

Kerenza stepped back, and he dropped his arms away. “Tell Ted I’ll see him on Tuesday.” She wiped her eyes, making no effort to hide her tears. Shying away from human emotion was not something she did.

Feeling guilty, a little angry at himself, somewhat bereft and somehow both heavy and light at the same time, Strike nodded. “I will do.” It wouldn’t even occur to this kind woman to stop visiting his uncle because things hadn’t worked out between the two of them.

“Goodbye, Cormoran.” She smiled gently and stepped back over the threshold of her homely cottage.

“Goodbye,” he replied gruffly, and what more was there to say? So he said nothing, and Kerenza closed the door.

Strike stood a moment, and then fished in his jacket pocket for his cigarettes. He lit one and, hoisting his rucksack higher onto his shoulder, turned and set off up the road towards Uncle Ted’s.

Perhaps he would ring Robin from the train, see if she wanted to meet tonight and fill him in on their cases. He had been too out of the loop lately. Time to pick up his share of the slack again, get back to work.


End file.
